The History of the World Begins in Ice by Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott has always been one of fantasy's more interesting voices, shifting her tone and voice to explore different ideas. Her Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel) has always felt a little underrated, as it's probably the most light-hearted of her adult fantasies, a comedy of manners set in an icepunk alt-history Europe populated by feuding mages and dinosaur lawyers. This companion volume encourages a welcome re-appraisal of the original trilogy.

The History of the World Begins in Ice collects together eleven short stories and eleven essays about the worldbuilding and character-crafting of the Spiritwalker Trilogy. Familiarity with the trilogy is an advantage, otherwise you might not catch all the references, although most of the stories (many published previously in unrelated anthologies) do stand alone to a degree, and some work as even a good sampler or intro to the main series.

The Spiritwalker books walk a tightrope between being funny, dramatic, romantic and tragic, and the stories in the collection reflect that. "The River-Born Child," about a young boy with a strange origin who does not believe that should impact his right to happiness or friendships, is maybe the most tragic of the stories but has a redemptive ending. "Bloom" and "A Compendium of Architecture" are entertaining tales serving as origin stories, to some extent, for characters in the main trilogy, but work well enough here as standalones. "To Be a Man" revisits one of the more entertaining side-characters from the trilogy in a particularly lusty and comic tale.

Beatrice, who in another universe was the main protagonist of the trilogy before narrowly missing out to her cousin Cat, gets both her own long narrative (annotated with literary criticism of wildly varying credibility by Cat) and a long-form poem. Cat and Andevai, the star-crossed lovers of the main trilogy, get another story to expand on their romance, "The Courtship," which is entertaining, despite the feeling that their romance got a lot of screen-time in the main trilogy. Andevai's sartorial choices, which I remember forming about a third of his characterisation in the main sequence, are fortunately downplayed here, but do make return appearances in later stories (few phrases in all of fantasy make my heart sink more than the words "dash jacket," but I try to bear it here with equanimity).

The highlight of the collection is "I am a Handsome Man," where it feels like the star of his own, equally worthy novel series, Apollo Crow, crashes headlong into the misadventures of the trilogy's main cast and they have to figure out who the real good and bad guys are. I'd read a lot more about this hero (?) and his adventures. "A Lesson to You Young Ones," is the shortest story in the collection, which is unfortunate because it's also the only one to really focus one of the signature concepts of the setting, the surviving humanoid dinosaurs. These are both a really cool concept (not totally original, obviously) and one that's not really made enough of in the trilogy or this story collection.

"Finding the Doctor" is the longest story in the collection and also the most like the main trilogy, featuring as it does cold mage Andevai and the redoubtable Cat joining forces to take on a hazardous mission, this time behind the lines of the Roman Empire as it resurgently tries to advance beyond the Alps, threatening Cat's plan to find a reliable midwife for her cousin. The mix of drama, geopolitics, romance and restrained comedy is the trilogy in miniature, and a good sampler if you're pondering taking on the main series.

The concluding story, "When I Grow Up", is one of the best as it tackles the next generation of characters, as the main cast of the trilogy gets older and their children seem poised to succeed them in a story that's both heartwarming and bittersweet.

The essays in the collection are also fascinating as Elliot ponders her ideas for the trilogy: a world that recalls the geography of Europe during the last Ice Age, with Britain and Europe joined by Doggerland, much larger islands in the Caribbean, and the endurance of the Roman Empire, with no Germanic tribes overrunning Europe, thus leaving Europe divided between the Romans, Celts and the Mande tribes of west Africa, displaced into Europe by various events. Further essays discuss how the Creole languages of this alt-Caribbean were created, and how each of the main characters was created. Elliott notes how by placing emphasis on trivial character tics (like Cat's appetite) she was able to make characters more rounded, at the expense of readers sometimes wondering if that was a hint at some greater mystery.

The History of the World Begins in Ice (****½) is a splendid volume by one of fantasy's more underrated but consistently excellent voices. Part short story collection, part behind-the-scenes glimpse at how you build a fantasy world and inhabit it with interesting people, it's a compelling read, and both a solid introduction to the Spiritwalker world and a welcome continuation of it. The book is available now.

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Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

The great Phene Empire once ruled a vast swathe of space, but it has been beaten back by the Yele League and the small, powerful nation of Chaonia. The Republic of Chaonia, long disregarded as a flyspeck irrelevance, has risen to greatness under Queen-Marshal Eirene, a gifted military strategic and politician who has united her people, brought the League to the negotiating table and now plans a bold move against the Empire which will grant Chaonia immense power. But the Empire is aware of her ambitions and moves to forestall her. Internal politics also threaten the Republic, and at the heart of them is Princess Sun, the Queen-Marshal's daughter and presumed heir who burns with the need to prove herself, earn her mother's respect and bring defeat to her enemies.

Unconquerable Sun is the first novel of the Sun Chronicles, a military space opera from Kate Elliott, one of SFF's most consistently rewarding authors over the past thirty years. Elliot started her career in space opera with the Jaran series but has become best-known for her accomplished epic fantasy series: Crown of Stars, Crossroads and Spiritwalker. Unconquerable Sun is both a genre homecoming but also an impressive historical analogue, an attempt to retell the story of Alexander the Great in a far-future, SF context.

Going into Unconquerable Sun, there were things I was expecting as normal from a Kate Elliott novel: impeccable worldbuilding that takes from a wide range of influences and merges them in original ways; excellent characterisation; richly-detailed political intrigue; and a canny and knowing sense of humour. These are all present and correct. What I wasn't quite expecting was the novel to be as foot-slammed-on-the-accelerator action-packed as it is. Elliott's always done well with battle sequences, military maneuvers and tactical elements in her prior fiction, but it's always previously felt like a secondary element, with the characters more more emphasised. Character remains foregrounded in this novel, but they are generally explored and developed whilst under fire (either on the ground or on starships). This isn't just space opera, but full-on military SF, and Elliott does it proud.

The worldbuilding is pleasingly complex, with the Chaonia Republic (here presumed to stand in for Macedonia) squashed between the Yele League (a guessed analogue for the Hellenic League of ancient Greece) and the Phene Empire (Space-Persia) and still bristling from its occupation by the Empire some decades previously. There's also the rules on interstellar travel, which can be conducted (albeit at still-achingly-slow speeds) by standard FTL engines (here called knnu drives) but mostly by beacons, fixed wormhole-gates linking systems together. Centuries previously, the beacon network suffered a catastrophic failure which destroyed most of the beacons, leaving only the periphery intact. Chaonia, Yele and Phene (among other, more distant powers) are therefore great powers still dwelling in the shadow of a vast vaster, older history, most of which was lost in the collapse. Readers keen to discern the relationship of these powers to Earth will find a few scattered clues to what happened, but not much more than that. Hopefully, this element will be explored further in later books.

Each of the major powers is also explored in depth, with the Empire being ruled not by a single ruler but a council of enigmatic "Riders," who are somehow telepathically-linked at all times (even over interstellar distances) in a way no one else understands. This gives the Empire a tremendous strategic advantage in warfare (since FTL communication is otherwise impossible) which the Chaonians hope to overturn by other means. Another key element is the space-borne civilisation of the Gatoi, who dwell on vast fleets constantly moving between the stars. The Gatoi serve the Empire as apparently-honoured mercenaries, but the Chaonians believe there may be more to this service than appears, leading to an alliance between the Queen-Marshal and a Gatoi renegade which Eirene hopes will bring the Empire down. The alliance is controversial, given it produced Princess Sun (whose legitimacy is constantly challenged because she is thus only half-Chaonian) and the long-term effectiveness of the project is in doubt. Political intrigue follows, particularly between Sun's father and House Lee, loyal servants of the Republic who are dubious of the alliance. Other worldbuilding elements feel more whimsical, such as a Chaonian reality TV show which has real power in terms of PR and politics, but is surprisingly well-developed.

On the character front, the book is told predominantly through three POVs: Princess Sun herself, through whose eyes we also get to know her retinue of allies and friends, the Companions; Persephone Lee, who tried to flee her family's smothering control five years ago to enlist in the military under an assumed identity; and Apama, a Phene pilot who is assigned to a military taskforce with a bold agenda and gradually discovers that she is far more important than anyone first suspected. Persephone tells her story in the first-person, whilst the other two stories are told in the third, an intriguing narrative device which breaks up the structure nicely (and leads to the suspicion that maybe Persephone is telling the whole story in flashback, with the other chapters being compiled from other accounts).

Unconquerable Sun is a novel of immense richness: excellent characters, terrific and detailed worldbuilding and a high concept (genderswapped Alexander the Great in spaaaace!) which in lesser hands would have been superficial but here is developed and explored in some depth. It's also a face-paced space opera with more spectacular space battles than you can shake a Star Destroyer at. Perhaps the only negatives I can consider is that perhaps a tad more build-up of the factions and players could have been accomplished before all hell breaks lose and stays loose for the rest of the book (around 150 pages into this 520-page novel), and Elliott's tendency for characters to engage in gossip, sartorial discussions and comical banter in the face of imminent death occasionally feels incongruous. That said, this isn't a book that's interested in realism more than it is in myth-making, and the feeling that you're dealing with Greek heroes transplanted in time and space makes this element more engaging.

Unconquerable Sun (****½) is original, fast-paced, action-packed but also rich in character and fascinating in its worldbuilding. It is available now in the UK and USA. The sequel, Furious Heaven, is due out in September 2021.

Kate Elliott's BLACK WOLVES series dropped by publishers

In disappointing news, Orbit Books have dropped publication plans for the second and further books in the Black Wolves series by Kate Elliott.

The first book, Black Wolves, was a semi-sequel to Elliott's earlier Crossroads trilogy, set in the same world. The second book, Dead Empire, was half-finished and cover art already prepared when the publisher made the decision to drop the series.

The news is somewhat confusing, as Orbit in the UK and Commonwealth territories has been Elliott's publishers for over twenty years. They released the Crown of Stars, Crossroads and Spiritwalker series, all of which sold well for them. Assuming that the reason for dropping the new series was poor sales, you'd assume that they would give the series more of a chance to prove itself, given the author's form and the sad but inarguable fact that many modern fantasy readers are now waiting until series are complete before reading them.

You won't be seeing this in the shops any time soon.

Elliott is currently working on extricating the novels from the contract so they can be shopped elsewhere, although long-term fantasy fans will know this can be a laborious task, such as the case of Paul Kearney's Sea-Beggars series, where the original publishers Bantam dropped the series after two books some thirteen years ago and he still hasn't be able to free up the rights, despite his new publishers, Solaris, being keen to publish the concluding volume of the series.

Hopefully it won't take as long as that before we series this series concluded. Meanwhile, Elliott is working on a new SF series for Tor Books, The Sun Chronicles, which she has described as "Alexander the Great in space" with a female lead. The first book, The Unconquerable Sun, will be published in July 2020.

Gratuitous Lists: Twenty Great Complete Fantasy Series

When writing articles about “the best fantasy series ever”, it’s inevitable that 1) the list will feature a lot of incomplete series, and 2) the list will feature a lot of complaints about “how can you call this series great when it’s incomplete, the next book might be rubbish?” This is a fair criticism. In fact, given that some of the biggest and most-namechecked modern fantasy series are incomplete (including A Song of Ice and Fire, The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Stormlight Archive and more), removing them from such a list immediately adds a lot of lesser-known series, which makes the list more interesting.

So here is a list of twenty great completed fantasy series. The criteria I used was as follows: the series can have sequels, but the core series itself must be done. You can read more books set in the world, but the story told has to be a complete entity with a beginning, middle and end. Hence the presence of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn even though Tad Williams has written an incomplete sequel trilogy, two short stories and two short novels set in the same world. The same thing for Steven Erikson’s Malazan sequence (although this was a little more dubious, given the presence of sequel and prequel series and complementary books written by his co-creator Ian Esslemont).

More arguable was a series which is ostensibly complete but more blatantly stands as part of an inter-connected whole. This immediately invalidated Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series, which comprises two complete sub-series but requires the upcoming third series to complete its narrative arc, and Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, where the story finishes but key thematic and character stories continue into three stand-alone novels and the incoming sequel trilogy. Brandon Sanderson was particularly difficult to juggle with this, although ultimately the original Mistborn trilogy was omitted from the list more for comparative quality purposes (it’s just bubbling under) rather than being an incomplete narrative itself.

This is list is also not presented in any kind of numerical order, as doing so would simply invite arguments about the order rather than discussion of the books themselves, and when you’re talking about this quality level the differences are going to be somewhat slight. This is also not a list of the twenty "best series ever" (which is too big a claim), but merely twenty really good completed series. There are many others.

The Middle-earth Series by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit (1937) • The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) • The Silmarillion (1977) • Unfinished Tales (1980)

Further reading: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • The History of Middle-earth series (12 volumes, 1983-96) • The Children of Húrin (2007) • Beren and Lúthien (2017) • The Fall of Gondolin (2018)

J.R.R. Tolkien created – or at least defined – the entire modern field of epic fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, a vast tome chronicling the War of the Ring between the free peoples of Middle-earth and the Dark Lord Sauron, as seen through the eyes of four modest hobbits. The novel was written as a sequel to his much simpler earlier story, The Hobbit, but grew in the telling to a huge story about the meaning of simple heroism and the passing of an age. Together, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a complete story, but fans wanting more can read The Silmarillion, the vast history and mythology of the entire world that Tolkien spent most of his life writing (he started working on it in 1917 and it was published sixty years later, four years after his own death). The oft-overlooked Unfinished Tales collects his other extant canonical writings on the subject of Middle-earth, including short stories and worldbuilding essays, some of which (like Gandalf’s account of the Quest of Erebor and a more detailed history of Númenor) are essential reading.

Hardcore fans can also read every single surviving draft, memo and note Tolkien wrote on the subject of Middle-earth, collected in The History of Middle-earth, as well as curiosities such as a collection of sheet music and songs about Middle-earth (The Road Goes Ever On) and some poems about tertiary characters (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). There’s also The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin, episodes from Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion which have been edited into stand-alone novellas.

Tolkien wrote with poetry and skill, creating an entirely new type of literature on the fly. More to the point, he wrote epic and personal stories which continue to resonate today.

MANY MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Cold Steel by Kate Elliott

Revolution has come to Europa. Radicals are urging the oppressed workers, born into clientage to the nobles and mage houses, to rise up and seize control of their own destiny. At the same time the Iberian general Camjiata has returned home, raised an army and invaded the Gallic lands. But these great events are of lesser important to Cat Barahal than finding her husband, Andevai, now a prisoner of her enigmatic father.

Cold Steel concludes the Spiritwalker Trilogy, Kate Elliott's skillful and intriguing blend of epic fantasy, the Napoleonic Wars, the Industrial Revolution, steampunk and, er, dinopunk, all told as something approaching a Victorian comedy of manners. It's a highly unconventional work from an author constantly seeking out new angles in the fantasy genre.

It's also the best book in the series. The first two novels set up a lot of complicated elements, such as the Wild Hunt, the mage houses, Camjiata, Cat's intricate family backstory, the magical abilities of her cousin Bee and the radicals, but then let them drop into the background in favour of Andevai and Cat's romance. With that now established, these other elements rise to the fore and the story becomes more epic and complete, moving between the difference storylines and characters with greater ease than in the first two novels. It helps that the fire mage James Drake is now promoted from middling annoyance to outright supervillain in this novel, giving Cat and her allies something more tangible to fight against than the mysterious Master of the Wild Hunt and the otherworldly courts he answers to.

The pace is crisp and effective, with the book not getting bogged down in side-elements as occasionally threatened in Cold Fire, and indeed some elements feel a little under-explored given their set-up in earlier novels (most notably the dragons, who get one spectacular scene but otherwise don't play much of a role in affairs). A very minor issue is that the book does become slightly obsessed with Andevai's wardrobe choices to the point of parody (although I suspect this is the point): I could certainly do with never reading the words "dash jacket" in a fantasy novel again.

Beyond that, Elliott fulfils in Cold Steel (****) the promise laid down in the earlier two, delivering a finely characterised, enjoyable and offbeat conclusion to an original and different kind of fantasy trilogy. It's less weighty and intense, and maybe less memorable, than her earlier Crown of Stars and Crossroads series, but it may also be more fun. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Cold Fire by Kate Elliott

Turmoil is brewing in Europa. The legendary general Camjiata has escaped from prison and is now building up an army-in-exile. Cat and her cousin Bee are still pawns in the plans of the rich and powerful, but Cat's otherworldly sire also has plans for her. For her part, Cat just wants to escape these machinations and forge her own path. Events bring her to the Antilles, the home of the Taino Kingdom and the Europan colony of Expedition. There she meets the powerful fire mages and becomes embroiled in yet more intrigue and magic, as her father prepares to use her to draw a powerful soul into his grasp.

Cold Fire is the middle volume of Kate Elliott's Spiritwalker Trilogy, which picks up shortly after the events of Cold Magic. Like its forebear, this is a well-characterised novel which eschews the normal conventions both of the epic fantasy and steampunk genres (whilst borrowing from both). There are elements in this book of the Victorian comedy-of-manners (and occasional, intriguing echoes of the likes of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell) and Celtic mythology, as well as the northern European legend of the Wild Hunt.

Elliott's masterstroke here is moving the story to the Caribbean where a whole swathe of other influences come into play, especially the culture and nature of the Taino people. This gives the book a very different atmosphere, especially the much warmer climate which moves us away from the Ice Age-afflicted Europa of the previous novel.

The clash of cultures, with Expedition and the Taino Kingdom presented as in some respects more egalitarian and liberal in matters of the power of women and sexual freedom but still ruled at the whim of an unelected elite, gives the novel a source of tension and debate. However, these tensions are not explored in depth, as the book devotes a lot of time to Cat and Andevai's relationship. Given that the first novel established the situation - them marrying against their will, initially disliking each other but eventually falling in love - this second book does feel like it retreads a lot of the same ground. For a novel almost six hundred pages in paperback, it also feels like not a lot of ground is covered: the opening chapters are interesting and the grand finale is excellent, but the middle third or so of the novel indulges itself in elements which feel a little too soap-operaish.

In some respects this is a typical middle book-of-a-trilogy syndrome, with the pace faltering as the story switches from an introductory to a concluding mode. But Elliott is a fine enough writer - one of the best in modern fantasy - that she overcomes these issues and delivers a cracking finale in which all of the carefully-set-up elements come into play and sets the scene for the final novel in the series, Cold Steel.

Cold Fire (***½) is an interesting and original epic fantasy novel which does things rather differently from the norm for the genre and is all the stronger for it. However, the pacing feels sluggish at times before returning to form in an excellent ending. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Cold Magic by Kate Elliott

The nations of Europa are struggling with threats from within and without. Vast ice sheets cover the north of the world and everyday survival can be a challenge. Technology is advancing, with the invention of airships and firearms, but the Mage Houses despise these developments and actively fight them. A would-be emperor, Camjiata, has been defeated but political turmoil has been left in his wake.

Cat Barahal, a young orphan growing up in the city of Adurnam with her aunt, uncle and cousin, is about to reach her majority when she discovers that a pact was made when she was younger. This pact means she must marry one of the feared Cold Mages. As she reluctantly goes along with this arrangement, she discovers secrets about her past, her family and her culture, and what this means for the future of Europa as a whole.

Kate Elliott has consistently been one of the most interesting fantasy authors working over the last twenty years. Her seven-volume Crown of Stars series, set in an alternate history version of Europe, was fascinating, well-characterised and offered fascinating commentary on religion and society. The Crossroads trilogy was much more complex and original, whilst also being tighter, and featured similar musings on both the individual and the larger scale of cultures and ideologies clashing across a continent, not to mention featuring one hell of a twist ending. Cold Magic is the opening volume of the Spiritwalker Trilogy and does some similar things but also brings some new ideas to the table.

The setting is vivid and fascinating, a steampunk/icepunk Europe where the sea levels never rose after the last Ice Age (because the Ice Age is still going on). Much of this book actually takes place in lands that were destroyed by floods tens of thousands of years ago, forming the English Channel. There is lots of detail on how people survive in a land where even the hottest summer days can still be chilly, most of it done organically. There's also a rich, unusual but convincing cultural backdrop, particularly the idea that the Mali Empire (one of the wealthiest in history before European colonisation) has been overrun by a plague, sending its incredibly wealthy upper classes to become refugees in Europa where they join forces with the Celts. But if Elliott is one of the best worldbuilders working in epic fantasy, she is also one of the best handlers of character. Cat, our central character, is a strong and confident woman but whose outer confidence and mastery of etiquette hides inner doubts, especially given her lack of knowledge about her parents and real family backstory. A major subplot of the novel is Cat piecing together her history from documents and accounts of the fate that befell her parents, rolling the story back even as it moves forward. Andevai, the Cold Mage that Cat is forced to marry, is painted in similar depths. Initially he appears unrelatable, remote, arrogant and selfish, but considerably more interesting nuances about him emerge as the story unfolds.

Cold Magic's greatest success is how it handles a striking tonal shift. The opening chapters are fairly grounded. Magic exists, but it is not prevalent and the world is dominated more by industry and the move to a steampunk(ish) existence. Then, about a third of the way into the book, Elliott hits the "Let's weird this stuff up" button and we have an explosion of otherworldly creatures, dalliances into the spirit world, animal spirits taking human form, dinosaur lawyers and prophetic dreams. Elliott foreshadows this quite nicely in the opening chapters so the shift is not jarring. There's also moments when the characters become aware of the existence of other worlds (possibly other timelines) and the world seems to teeter on the brink of fragility, recalling (if briefly) the malleable realities of Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History.

Cold Magic (****) is an imaginative, well-written and different kind of epic fantasy. There are some complaints possible about pacing (not a colossal amount happens in its 500 pages) but the slower pace actually allows the reader to take in the vividly-drawn setting and atmosphere more completely. Those looking for a pedal-to-the-metal action novel may want to look elsewhere, but for those who like imagination and immersion in their fantasy, Cold Magic is a very good read. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 19

The early to mid 1990s saw an explosion in the popularity of epic fantasy. Writers in the field went from a few dozen to hundreds as publishers chased the next Robert Jordan or Tad Williams. Sales were extremely strong, but market oversaturation led to a decline in the latter part of the decade. But several major, strong voices emerged from this period who would go on to great success.

The Last Wish

Epic fantasy is not just popular in the English language. Authors such as Tolkien, Pratchett and Jordan achieved fame worldwide, with translated editions of their books selling in their tens and hundreds of thousands, even millions, outside of their success in English. Some authors even enjoyed greater success: Tad Willias's SF/fantasy Otherland series sold very well in the USA and UK, but became a phenomenal bestseller in Germany. Paul Kearney had middling sales in English, but his books are quite popular in places from Spain to Israel.

More unusual, until recently, were authors from overseas being translated into English. Whether this was simple economics - the additional cost of paying a professional translator was not deemed worth it when there was so much homegrown talent available - is unclear. However, in the 2000s publishers began realising that by publishing non-English authors in the States and Commonwealth markets, they could often tap into a large back-catalogue of already-completed works. And the first author to benefit from this was Polish superstar Andrzej Sapkowski.

Sapkowski began publishing short stories about Geralt of Rivia, a "witcher" or monster-hunter, in the late 1980s. In 1990 he assembled these stories as The Witcher (re-released in 1993 in an expanded form under its definitive title, The Last Wish), which became a bestseller in Poland. Its success soon spread to the huge (and oft-neglected) Russian-speaking market as well as across Europe, from Spain to Germany. The book was followed by The Sword of Destiny (1992), a linked series of short stories which established the background and setting for a longer epic. This epic took the form of five novels, starting with Blood of Elves, published between 1994 and 1999 (with a prequel novel being published in 2012).

These books are notable for drawing on a broader range of European mythology than is the norm, and for a large degree of moral complexity. The reliance of the books on Polish wordplay for their humour made translating them challenging, and may have contributed to the delay in their appearance in English.

In 2007 the decision was made to bring the books into English. This was inspired by the release, by CD Projekt, of a tie-in video game called The Witcher. The game was a modest success and was followed by The Witcher II: Assassin of Kings (2011), which was a much bigger worldwide hit. This in turn was followed by The Witcher III: The Last Hunt (2015), which was a worldwide monster smash, selling six million copies in its first month on sale. The English translations proceeded in a haphazard manner, with the release of the later books delayed by immense legal complications. These were eventually resolved and the series was finally released in English to significant critical acclaim.

King's Dragon

Alis A. Ramussen started her writing career in 1988, publishing a stand-alone fantasy novel called The Labyrinth Gate, followed by the science fiction Highroad Trilogy in 1990. Sales were disappointing, so her publishers proposed switching to a pen name to relaunch her career. Now writing as Kate Elliott, her next project was the Jaran science fiction series. This was modestly successful, but she achieved greater popularity with the well-received Golden Key, a fantasy collaboration with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson. These marked out Elliott as an author watch.

Her next project, King's Dragon (1997), established her one of the top writers in the epic fantasy field. This was the opening volume of Crown of Stars, a series that grew to seven volumes and was completed in 2006. Crown of Stars is both a traditional epic fantasy and one that comments on the genre, with its strong female characters and deliberately low-scaled setting with armies typically numbering in the hundreds rather than the thousands and a much greater emphasis on the power of religion. The series is also notable for being set in an overtly parallel-universe version of Europe rather than a more loosely "influenced by" setting. Its musings on faith and religious power are impressive (particularly the expectation-defying storyline of Alain), and overall it ranks as one of the more interesting and underrated completed series in the field.

Elliott has since written the remarkable Crossroads and Spiritwalker trilogies, as well as the Court of Fives YA series.

Wizards' First Rule

After the immense success of The Wheel of Time, Tor Books began looking for authors who could repeat Robert Jordan's success for them. In 1994 they published the debut novel by an American author named Terry Goodkind.

Goodkind had come to writing relatively late in life, having had a successful career as a painter and cabinet-maker. Dyslexia had made him reluctant to tackle writing, but he overcame this to write Wizards' First Rule in 1993; Tor published it the following year, when the author was 46. The book was initially well-received and sold impressively, so Tor published several sequels. This became The Sword of Truth series, which by the time of its completion thirteen years later had expanded to eleven novels and sold over 25 million copies, making Goodkind Tor's second-biggest-selling author after Robert Jordan.

The Sword of Truth is unusual in that it is heavily influenced by the works of Ayn Rand, particular Atlas Shrugged and the socio-economic theory of Objectivism it popularised. Objectivism states that the will and importance of the individual is of paramount importance and that social systems should not limit the ability of the individual to seek happiness or promote their own success. However, some commentators have noted that this is merely a thinly-veiled excuse for unrestrained capitalist expansion and a justification for the selfishness of the privileged over the unlucky or socially-challenged. The Objectivist philosophy is fairly restrained in Wizards' First Rule but becomes more prominent in later novels (and then completely dominant in Faith of the Fallen, the sixth book in the series) when substantial chunks of the books are given over to the heroes of the series, Richard Rahl and Kahlan, expounding on the theory and its application to their fantasy world at some considerable length. Other political ideas also made their way into the series, such as Goodkind using carciatures of Bill and Hilary Clinton as villains in one novel and expounding on Communism as the primary evil in his world. Goodkind also began stating in interviews that he was not writing fantasy because he loved the genre, but because he saw it as a way of exploring "important human themes", to the bemusement of many reviewers and fans familiar with the series and concepts such as "nipple magic", the "noble goat" and "evil shapeshifting monster who attacks a primary protagonist whilst inexplicably disguised as a chicken".

Despite the naysayers, The Sword of Truth remains one of the biggest-selling fantasy series of recent times. Unusually, however, it's also a series whose profile and sales dipped as it continued. The concluding volumes reached the top of the New York Times bestseller lists, but Goodkind's attempt to launch a tangentially-related series set in the modern world, The Law of Nines, was not successful. A subsequent sequel series to The Sword of Truth, following up on Richard and Kahlan's later adventures, has also failed to achieve the same level of sales as the earlier novels. A television adaptation of the series, Legend of the Seeker, was also cancelled after two seasons (and having very little to do with the books). However, these failures are only relative, and Goodkind remains one of the more well-known - and some fantasy fans may say infamous - authors in the field.

The Baker's Boy

SFF publishing's ongoing quest to find the next big thing turned up an additional success in 1995. A British author residing in San Francisco, Julie Victoria Jones, had sent Warner Books a manuscript called The Baker's Boy, the opening volume of a trilogy called The Book of Words. With the trilogy already in an advanced state of completion, Warners (who used the series to reboot a moribund SFF line) decided to publish the series with a heavy blizzard of publicity, mirrored by Orbit Books in the UK.

The result was a trilogy that smashed onto the bestseller lists and achieved early critical acclaim, not for its story which was standard but for its dark sense of humour, overriding themes of tragedy and murky, complex morality. Jones also proved to be remarkably prolific, producing a fine stand-alone novel called The Barbed Coil in 1997 before embarking on The Sword of Shadows, a sequel series to The Book of Words, although not one that requires detailed foreknowledge of the original series.

Published in 1999, A Cavern of Black Ice represented not so much an improvement in quality but a quantum jump in skill and ability. Featuring substantially improved characterisation and prose skills over her earlier works, A Cavern of Black Ice was a fine fantasy novel that boded well for the rest of the series. Unfortunately, Jones's formerly spectacular production rate appeared to drop off a cliff, with long waits for the sequels: A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), A Sword From Red Ice (2007) and Speaker for the Dead (2010). The fifth novel, Endlords, has been delayed several times.

Despite these disappointingly long waits, The Sword of Shadows remains one of the more accomplished works of epic fantasy of recent years. Its brooding, freezing atmosphere, its political intrigue and its tragic characters combine to form a series of much greater depth than some of its contemporaries, and if it ends strongly it could be regarded as one of the defining works of its time.

Hawkwood's Voyage

Paul Kearney, a writer from Northern Ireland, began his writing career with three stand-alone novels: The Way to Babylon (1992), A Different Kingdom (1993) and Riding the Unicorn (1994). These novels are notable for featuring characters from the real world intermingling with the fantasy world in some way. A Different Kingdom was particularly remarkable, coming across as a uniquely Irish spin on some of the same ground explored in Robert Holdstock's woodland fantasy, Mythago Wood. Riding the Unicorn hinted at a different direction for Kearney's work, featuring as it did massive battles and clashes between armies in a well-realised fantasy world.

Published in 1995, Hawkwood's Voyage was the logical next step in that process. Set completely in a fantasy world, the novel charts the clash between the western kingdoms of Normannia and the invading hordes of the Merduks of the east, who follow a different religion. The western kingdoms are divided by civil war sparked by an attempt by the fanatical Ramusian Church to press down on heretics and magic-users not sworn to their services. A number of these heretics flee into the western ocean as part of an ill-advised exploration mission seeking a rumoured new continent across the sea, whilst the kings of two of the great western nations break away in an attempt to protect their people. This leaves the eastern kingdom of Torunna to face the invaders alone, massively outnumbered and with only a single beleaguered fortress guarding the way.

The Monarchies of God, spanning five short novels published from 1995 to 2003, was a series ahead of its time. It was unusually bloody and grim, although never gratuitously so, but ended on a note of hope and cooperation. It featured vivid, memorable battle sequences reminiscent of David Gemmell, along with cynical military camaraderie in the style of Glen Cook. The religious turmoil is drawn straight from history (the opening fall of Aekir, the great religious centre of the east, is based on the capture of Constantinople in 1453), but the presence of werewolves injects a shot of sheer horror into the narrative at unexpected moments. The books are also remarkable for carrying a huge amount of plot and character development in relatively few pages (the combined page count for the series is roughly equal to George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords by itself). They also take place later in feigned history than most fantasy books, featuring gunpowder, arquebuses and cannons alongside the more traditional swords and crossbows. Other fantasy series have employed gunpowder (such as Tom Arden's Orokon sequence) but it remains an under-explored technology in epic fantasy.

An intermittent release cycle and the earlier books going out of print before the later ones could be published meant that The Monarchies of God did not achieve the success it deserved on its initial printing: its reissuing in two volumes (Hawkwood and the Kings and Century of the Soldier) by Solaris in 2010 proved more successful. Kearney has since written two volumes of a nautical fantasy series, The Sea-Beggars (the concluding volume has been held up by a rights dispute between the British and American publishers); a Gemmell-esque quasi-historical trilogy based on ancient Greece called The Macht; and a couple of tie-in novels for properties such as Primeval and Warhammer 40,000. His next book, The Wolf in the Attic, is a return to the more intimate, character-based fantasy of his early work. However, Kearney's immense skills at epic fantasy make him one of the more interesting, if underread, authors in the genre.

By the mid-1990s epic fantasy was looking for its Next Big Thing, a series that would come along and redefine the genre. Attempts to simply replicate Tolkien or Jordan hadn't really worked, and although some big sellers had emerged, there still wasn't any sign of a work that would elevate the genre further. When it did arrive, in August 1996, it wasn't from a bright and hopeful young author, but from a long-standing and respected author in the fields of science fiction and horror.

Waterstones fail to recognise female fantasy authors

Fantasy author Foz Meadows recently published this article, in which she challenged the failure of Waterstones (the UK's only remaining nationwide chain of bookstores) to recognise female fantasy authors - or SF authors for that matter - in their 2012 literature on the SFF genre. No less than 113 authors are listed in the booklet but only nine of them are female, which is rather an eyebrow-raising imbalance.

Could do better.

Juliet E. McKenna expands on this by claiming to have seen lots of "If you like George R.R. Martin, why not try..."-style lists in bookshops, almost invariably consisting solely of male authors. Apparently, when she challenged one bookshop on why this was so, she was told "Women don't write epic fantasy." This is blatantly untrue, and it was rather idiotic of them to say so to an author with no less than fifteen epic fantasy novels under her belt. Indeed, when people have asked me what authors they should be reading after getting hooked on the likes of Martin or Abercrombie or Lynch, I often surprise myself with how many of the recommendations that come to mind are women.

So, without further ado, here is a brief list of female epic fantasy authors you should check out if you've gotten hooked on the genre via Martin or Game of Thrones:

Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb, aka Megan Lindholm (both pen-names of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden), writes trilogies featuring epic battles and magical creatures (including dragons), but is resolutely focused on her characters. She enjoys writing characters who have their own motivations which make sense to them, no matter how they are painted as heroes or villains by others. Martin is a huge fan, as is Steven Erikson, and she has enjoyed a lengthy and prolific career. In fact, Martin has cited Hobb's use of animal magic as one of several influences on the warging in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Her best-known works are the five sub-series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, comprising the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies and the Rain Wild Chronicles quartet, plus a forthcoming series currently planned to be a trilogy, The Fitz and the Fool. Hobb broke away from this series to write an unrelated work, The Soldier Son Trilogy, which was not as well-received. Writing under the pen name Megan Lindholm, she also wrote ten earlier books, mostly aimed at younger readers.

Key works
The Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice (1995), Royal Assassin (1996), Assassin's Quest (1997)
The Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic (1998), The Mad Ship (1999), Ship of Destiny (2000)
The Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool's Errand (2001), The Golden Fool (2002), Fool's Fate (2003)
The Soldier Son Trilogy: Shaman's Crossing (2005), Forest Mage (2006), Renegade's Magic (2008)
The Rain Wild Chronicles: Dragon Keeper (2009), Dragon Haven (2010), City of Dragons (2011), Blood of Dragons (2011)
The Fitz and the Fool: The Fool's Assassin (2014)

Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott is the pen-name of Alis A. Ramussen, under which name she published a fantasy, The Labyrinth Gate and an SF series, The Highroad Trilogy. After apparently disappointing early sales, she changed her writing name and returned with the SF Jaran series in the early 1990s. This was more successful and she has followed it up with a series of epic fantasies, including her more recent work, the Crossroads and Spiritwalker series.

However, Elliott's largest and best-known series is Crown of Stars, a seven-volume epic published between 1997 and 2006. If Martin's Song of Ice and Fire depicts a world set at the tail end of the medieval period, with armies in the tens of thousands, shining knights and full plate armour, Crown of Stars is set at the opposite end, when any army larger than a thousand is huge and kings tour their countries on endless processions rather than being tied to single capitals. Heavily influenced by real medieval European history (to the point where Crown of Stars can also be called an alternate history based on 9th and 10th Century Germany and Eastern Europe), Elliott weaves a large number of storylines focusing on themes such as war, chivalry religion and gender issues without dialling back (though also not over-emphasising) on the brutality of the period. Perhaps slightly overlong, but also genuinely thought-provoking.

Crossroads, which will eventually encompass at least seven novels set across three generations, is also interesting. Set in a world not based explicitly on any period of real history, it features a number of carefully-created original cultures clashing for control of a land called the Hundred. The original Crossroads trilogy will be followed by a new book later this year, The Black Wolves, set some years later.

Key works
The Golden Key (1996, with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson)
The Jaran Series: Jaran (1992), An Earthly Crown (1993), His Conquering Sword (1993), The Law of Becoming (1994)
Crown of Stars: King's Dragon (1997), Prince of Dogs (1998), The Burning Stone (1999), Child of Flame (2000), The Gathering Storm (2003), In the Ruins (2005), Crown of Stars (2006)
Crossroads: Spirit Gate (2007), Shadow Gate (2008), Traitors' Gate (2009), The Black Wolves (2014)
Spiritwalker: Cold Magic (2010), Cold Fire (2011), Cold Steel (2013)

Elizabeth Bear

Elizabeth Bear is an author I'm only recently acquainted with, thanks to her superb Eternal Sky Trilogy. However, she has published many novels in several different subgenres (including SF and urban fantasy), including her acclaimed Iskryne series, co-written with Sarah Monette.

The Eternal Sky trilogy is an epic fantasy set on an alternate version of the central Asian steppes, with a race of nomadic tribesmen who recall George R.R. Martin's Dothraki. However, whilst the Dothraki are (partly) based on the Asian nomads at the very start of their expansion and rise to power, Bear's series deals with a far more sophisticated and subtle people, depicted as intelligent warriors and capable engineers rather than just hordes of plunderers and rapists. It also features some intriguingly weird magic (the skies over each nation and culture are somehow different) and deliciously rich characterisation.

Key works
The Eternal Sky Trilogy: Range of Ghosts (2012), Shattered Pillars (2013), Steles of the Sky (2014)

J.V. Jones

Julie Victoria Jones hit the ground running with The Baker's Boy in 1995. Boosted by a Robert Jordan cover quote, it rapidly became one of the biggest-selling fantasy novels of the year and propelled her onto the bestseller lists. It was a rough novel, not unexpectedly for a debut, and she improved in leaps and bounds over the remainder of the Book of Words trilogy and a further stand-alone novel, The Barbed Coil. However, Jones found a different and far more sophisticated level of writing ability with her Sword of Shadows series, a decade and a half in the making and still incomplete.

Sword of Shadows is a (very loose) sequel to The Book of Words and picks up the story of the daughter of the previous trilogy's hero, as well as a whole host of new characters. It is set beyond the northern mountains in a bleak subarctic wilderness, heavily influenced by Scandinavia and the Inuit tribes. If you enjoyed those parts of A Song of Ice and Fire set beyond the Wall, this series is for you, with descriptions of snow and ice so vivid you may want to wrap up warm before reading. Unfortunately, Jones also seems to be emulating Martin's five-year gaps between volumes, but this is one of those series where the books are worth the long waits.

Key works
The Barbed Coil (1998)
The Book of Words: The Baker's Boy (1995), A Man Betrayed (1996), Master and Fool (1997)
The Sword of Shadows: A Cavern of Black Ice (1999), A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), A Sword from Red Ice (2007), Watcher of the Dead (2010), Endlords (forthcoming)

Kameron Hurley

A relative newcomer, Hurley's works are challenging, direct and different. Her first trilogy is apparently SF, but magic (based around the manipulation of different kings of bugs) is liberally used. Her current series is an epic fantasy with a difference, set in a world which is being invaded by forces from its own parallel dimension, with the twist that only people whose doppelgangers are dead in the other universe can pass through. Hurley's books are complex, thought-provoking and vitally infused with life and action.

Hurley is also a prolific and essayist. She won a Hugo Award for "We Have Always Fought", an essay challenging the lazy gender assumptions prevalent in epic fantasy and science fiction based on erroneous understandings of history.

Key works
The Stars Are Legion (2016)
The Geek Feminist Revolution (2016)

The Bel Dame Apocrypha: God's War (2010), Rapture (2011), Infidel (2012)
The Mirror Empire: The Mirror Empire (2014), Empire Ascendant (2015), Broken Heavens (2017)

N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin is a relative newcomer, but made her mark on the genre with The Inheritance Trilogy (no, not that one) and the Dreamblood duology. The latter - which regrettably is so far all I've read - is set in a fantasised take on Egypt that completely avoids cliche: no cat-headed people fighting sphinxes, thankfully. Instead, it's a well-thought-out, intelligent take on the fantasy genre and its conventions about religion, power and gender roles, whilst also being a kick-arse adventure story set in a fantasy world refreshingly not based on Medieval Europe. Her next book, The Fifth Season, is out later this year.

Key works
The Fifth Season (2014)
The Inheritance Trilogy: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), The Broken Kingdoms (2010), The Kingdom of Gods (2011)
The Dreamblood: The Killing Moon (2012), The Shadowed Sun (2012)

Juliet E. McKenna

Juliet E. McKenna is a prominent member of the UK SFF community, noted for her role in the writing collective The Write Fantastic. She has penned (as mentioned above) fifteen fantasy novels in four series, though all set on the same world.

I read her debut novel, The Thief's Gamble (featuring a female thief and rogue), when it was first released and found it highly enjoyable. Unfortunately, I haven't read the rest of her books but look forward to doing so.

Key works
The Tales of Einarinn: The Thief's Gamble (1999), The Swordsman's Oath (1999), The Gambler's Fortune (2000), The Warrior's Bond (2001), The Assassin's Edge (2002)

The Aldabreshin Compass: Southern Fire (2003), Northern Storm (2004), Western Shore (2005), Eastern Tide (2006)
The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution: Irons in the Fire (2009), Blood in the Water (2010), Banners in the Wind (2010)
The Hadrumal Crisis: Dangerous Waters (2011), Darkening Skies (2012), Defiant Peaks (2012)

J.K. Rowling

You may have heard of her. And yes, I count her books as epic fantasy.

This is only scratching the surface here, so hit me with some more epic fantasies (or, sod it, fantasy in general) written by women in the comments.

ETA: When this article was originally published, it included K.J. Parker, at the time widely reported by the publishers to be female. It was later revealed that K.J. Parker is in fact comic fantasy author Tom Holt. As a result, the entry has been removed from the list and replaced by the more than deserving Kameron Hurley.

Traitors' Gate by Kate Elliott

An invading army is laying waste to the lands of the Hundred. The reeves, the giant eagle-riding police force of the land, are unable to hold them back. In desperation they have struck up an alliance with an exiled outlander prince and his militia, but the enemy are led by corrupted Guardians, resurrected beings with the power to look into souls and strike people dead with a glance. The only hope of victory may lie with the uncorrupted 'pure' Guardians. But to achieve this, they may have to give up a terrible secret...

Traitors' Gate concludes the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott, or rather it concludes the opening three-book arc of the series. Future books are planned picking up the story some generations further down the line. For now, however, it is a self-contained trilogy with no major cliffhangers or unresolved plot elements.

It's been five years since I read the first two volumes in the series, so I was initially a bit swamped as I caught up with what was going on. The core storyline is fairly straightforward, but the secret to the success of the trilogy is how Elliott layers in thematic elements to apparently trivial characterisation and how she addresses a wide range of different topics - from sexuality and female empowerment to commerce and religious freedom - within the confines of a more straightforward story. In fact, my biggest complaint about the trilogy as a whole is that it like it could have done with an additional book to help flesh out the world and cultures (a far cry from her prior Crown of Stars series which, whilst very good, could have probably done with at least a volume being shaved off its length).

The book and the trilogy as a whole also explores the concept of corruption and the ethics of the use of power. Elliott has little truck with evil magic or other examples of simplistic morality, instead citing that every person has within them the capacity for good or ill, the Guardians included, and she contrasts well the rigid thinking of the Qin (who prefer to see the world in absolutes rather than shades of grey) against those who are more open to a more complex view of the world. There's a good culture clash element which is not over-egged. There's also a feeling of melancholy to the story: the Hundred is an open-minded, tolerant land which has to become harder and more regimented to fight the invaders and in the process loses something of itself.

The worldbuilding is excellent - the Hundred is not another European medieval fantasyscape but an original creation drawing on many sources - and the characterisation is fairly strong. The pacing is a little off: for almost three-quarters of the length of the novel it honestly feels like there is no way of defeating the enemy and most of the time is spent on less-important character arcs, and suddenly everything spins on a dime. It is done reasonably convincingly, but certainly the ending feels a little abrupt. However, the ending is also deliciously messy. Allies suddenly find themselves at odds and what seems like deliverance could be (and we don't find out for certain) enslavement under a different name.

Traitors' Gate (****) concludes an accomplished fantasy trilogy with intelligence and complexity. Elliott has crafted an interesting world here and it'll be interesting to see what happens there next. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

News

Scott Lynch has revealed on his blog (during a discussion on the Blizzard forum ID debacle, which I may cover in a future Countdown to Liberty post) that he is close to handing in revisions on The Republic of Thieves, suggesting that the Spring 2011 date for the book is solid. He is, "Trying to steer a certain book home, baby, home. Revisions are due."


Kate Elliott talks about the Crown of Stars fantasy series which is now coming out (with amazing cover art) in France.

Wizards of the Coast appear to be undergoing some sort of worrying convulsion at the moment, shedding employees, delaying and dropping novels and generally acting in a bizarre manner. Paul Kemp, one of their biggest-selling authors, has seen his new Erevis Cale novel, Godborn (the first in a new trilogy), pushed back all the way to mid-2012 with no explanation, whilst the Forgotten Realms book editor, Phil Athans, has been dismissed. All of this comes amid rumours that Dungeons and Dragons is severely under-performing for WotC (not making a loss, but still not hitting their targets) and questions over the game's future direction.


On Facebook and Twitter Brandon Sanderson has said he has completed the writing of Towers of Midnight, the penultimate Wheel of Time novel, and is now hard at work on revisions before the book's deadline of mid-August to get the book out in the first week of November, as planned.

At a recent book-signing in San Diego, George R.R. Martin reported that A Dance with Dragons has now passed the 1,400 manuscript-page mark. His previous blog posts had revealed that the target length of the book has dropped below the 1,500 MS page-count of A Storm of Swords, indicating that completion is, if not imminent, then at least heaving (if unpredictably lurching around) into view. There are also rumoured signs that Bantam US are targeting a Spring 2011 release date even if the book is completed imminently, which leaves it up to HarperCollins Voyager in the UK to see if they can repeat their Herculean feat of getting Swords on shelves less than ten weeks after hand-in, to ensure both a 2010 release and an influx of overseas sales.

Terry Pratchett has established a new prize. The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Hear, Anywhen But Now Prize will reward debut authors writing in the alternate history subgenre. More details here.

Recent rumours that a Doctor Who movie was in development with Johnny Depp starring have been pretty thoroughly crushed. Russell T. Davies has swatted it down as well.

Kate Elliott on returning to her JARAN SF universe

Kate Elliott is working on the second volume of her new Spiritwalker Trilogy, but recently blogged that an extremely long-standing plot problem which brought about an end to her Jaran science fiction series has been resolved, and she now 'knows how to' write the fifth volume in the series. No firm plans have been made to write this book, as Elliott has the remainder of the Spiritwalker series followed by additional books in her Crossroads fantasy universe planned. It would also be preferable if the existing books were reprinted before a new volume was written, which obviously depends on Elliott's publishers.


The published Jaran books are Jaran (1992), An Earthly Crown (1993), His Conquering Sword (1993) and The Law of Becoming (1994), with the second and third novels actually one very long novel called The Sword of Heaven that was split in half for length reasons. The fifth book, if it is ever written, would be called The Game of Princes.

In related news, Elliott has also disclosed that Cold Fire (the second book in the Spiritwalker trilogy; the first, Cold Magic, is out in September) features both zombies and sharks, but sadly no news on ninjas and/or pirates yet.

New cover art

James from Speculative Horizons has unveiled the new cover art by Benjamin Carre for the UK version of The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. The book was completed late last year and is currently undergoing rewrites and edits for a Spring 2011 launch in both the UK and USA.


Meanwhile, courtesy of Dark Wolf, are the French covers for the first two books in Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series, King's Dragon and Prince of Dogs. The cover artist is Didier Graffet.


Some nice work there!

Some more forthcoming cover art

Here is the cover art from three forthcoming releases from Gollancz. All are works-in-progress and not quite the final designs so far:


The Black Lung Captain is the second volume in Chris Wooding's The Tales of the Ketty Jay, the first of which, Retribution Falls, came out last year and was excellent. I hear review copies are being prepared, and this will be a priority read if so. The book is due on 29 July 2010 in the UK and some time in 2011 in the USA from Bantam Spectra (along with the first book). Wooding is already hard at work on the third book, The Iron Jackal.


I am informed by the publisher that Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings is getting a simultaneous UK and US release (although Amazon is currently listing it for February 2011). The UK artwork is, unfortunately, somewhat less successful in this case than it was for the Mistborn books, despite the intriguing, muted use of colour. The light, ethereal tone is very interesting, but I'm not sure that it's a good match for Sanderson's more traditional fantasy style.


Disciple of the Dog is Scott Bakker's second stand-alone, semi-mainstream novel following on from 2008's Neuropath. It will also apparently be his last non-Earwa book until both The Aspect-Emperor and the as-yet unnamed third series are completed. The novel is about a private investigator with perfect recall who is called in to infiltrate a sinister cult in search of a missing girl. The novel will be published on 16 September 2010.

Many thanks to Jussi on the Westeros.org forum for tracking down these images.

As a bonus here's the cover art for Kate Elliott's Cold Magic, the first in her Spiritwalker Trilogy, due in September 2010 from Orbit. Thanks to Kate for clarification on the series title.